Sunday, September 9, 2007

Orlowski is spot on

I don't often say that. Yes, with the iPod touch, Apple has reinvented the PDA market in a way almost no-one expected. Remember, Steve Jobs has never been a convergence guy. He's always argued been an advocate of elegant devices that do one or two things really well. I moved to a Palm Vx (from a Newton MessagePad 120) because it was so simple and elegant, but each successive Palm device (a 515, a T3, a LifeDrive) became more complex, unwieldy, and unstable. The iPod touch just sneaked up behind Palm and killed their TX, while they were stabbing the Foleo.

And as a bonus, the importance of which few pundits or bloggers have realised yet, Apple stealthily enters a new market altogether: the connected PDA. This 'Second Box' business is one that almost everyone has neglected, because they've followed the conventional wisdom that Everything Must Be Converged. But what if that isn't true?